Keith Ritter: What's the real cost of 'green jobs'?

The ad said: "Become a wind energy technician! Learn how at Shasta College's Red Bluff campus. Must have no fear of extreme heights or have claustrophobia." With the Hatchet Ridge wind farm now fully operational (and service technicians climbing 300-foot ladders and crawling through cramped generator nacelles to keep it that way), there are, indeed, real renewable-energy jobs right here in the north state. And new jobs are a good thing, right?

With great hoopla, some green advocates press for further renewable-energy subsidies amid claims that solar, wind, biomass, and other renewable-energy technologies will create up to a million new U.S.-based jobs and revitalize our economy. Says the Worldwatch Institute: "In the United States alone, coal industry employment has fallen by half in the last 20 years, despite a one-third increase in production. Renewables are poised to tackle our energy crisis and create millions of new jobs worldwide. Meanwhile, fossil fuel jobs are increasingly becoming fossils themselves, as coal mining communities and others worry about their livelihoods."

Huh? Did I miss something in Econ 101? Since when did improving productivity (33 percent production increase with half the labor) become a national economic drain? Isn't productivity improvement exactly what creates new jobs, freeing both capital and labor to do ever more diverse tasks, producing a wider variety of goods and services at lower cost and improving our lives?

Granted, coal will run out and the wind won't, so eventually we'll have to rely much more on renewable energy to keep the lights on. For strategic reasons, it needs to be in the long-term energy plan. Just don't try to sell renewables as an immediate booster-shot to our currently moribund economy. You could just as well claim that converting our fossil-fuel-powered agricultural industry to biomass-driven equipment will boost our economy via millions of "new" agricultural jobs. Shasta College can teach "new" on-the-job skills like "Gee" and "Haw." Yeah, millions of 21st-century plowmen steering plows behind hay-eating horses and mules — that'll boost our agricultural exports and pay our national debt.

Specifically, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that coal-fired power plants generated 1.72 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2009. The EIA also estimates the coal power industry employed 60,000 plant workers plus 80,000 miners and workers transporting the coal, totaling 140,000 jobs. That's 12 million kilowatt-hours per job. Wind farms generated 71 billion kilowatt-hours, or 4 percent of the coal-generated energy. According to the American Wind Power Association, U.S. wind industry employment rose to 85,000 in 2008. That's 835,000 kilowatt-hours/job. This means it takes 15 times as many man-hours to generate a kilowatt-hour of wind as it does of coal. Someone has to pay 15 times the payroll for that power. That someone is the electric ratepayer, i.e. — you.

U.S. solar employment, on a man-hour per kilowatt-hour basis, is even worse compared to coal. The Solar Institute's 2010 National Solar Jobs Census estimates that 93,000 are employed in the solar industry. EIA's latest data shows that solar PV systems generated 11 billion kilowatt-hours in 2009. With 93,000 workers, that's 118,000 kilowatt-hours/job, or 103 times more man-hours per kilowatt-hour for solar generation as compared to coal-generation.

To completely replace U.S. coal-generated kilowatt-hours with solar power at today's labor-efficiency rates, it would require not 1 million, but over 14 million workers employed in solar manufacturing, installation and maintenance. Suppose total per-job costs, including a "living" wage, social security, Obamacare employer costs, and all other basic or mandated employment costs is $50,000 per year. That's a cool $700 billion yearly payroll, or $2,000 a year per U.S. resident. And that doesn't cover the cost of replacing our natural gas-fired generators (stop the fracking!) or our decommissioned hydroelectric (gotta save the fish!) power plants. In an all-solar age, (can't let the birds get hurt or the view ruined by wind turbines!) the average electric bill for the family of 4 (you again) would stand north of $8,000 a year to fund green jobs.

OK, coal may have some major problems that wind and solar don't. These figures do not reflect the soft-cost externalities, such as the environmental impacts of mining or sulfur dioxide and CO2 emissions. But we're talking pure short-term economics here — how to give the U.S. gross national product a shot in the arm to keep the mortgages paid, the taxes rolling in, and keep health care and Social Security alive next year, not how to save the planet.

Reflecting on the green job situation, those new "green" agricultural jobs may not be so bad after all. No extreme heights or cave-like conditions. Just watch your step. Your foot might plunk right into a pile of Worldwatch Institute economic theory.